Thursday, March 13, 2014

interview nuggets #3

A not very clear question about "and other unfinished revolutions", the subtitle of Después del rock. Psicodelia, postpunk, electrónica y otras revoluciones inconclusas, the anthology published by Caja Negra, elicted this response:

"The "unfinished
revolution" subtitle was chosen by Caja Negra. Although I guess they got
it from the prologue chapter in Rip It Up, where I set up the whole
emergence of postpunk out of punk. And the idea there was that punk was the incomplete revolution: that
it had talked of revolution but it fell short both musically (too much of punk
was basic traditional hard rock, just not played very well) and in terms of the
political economy of music production (too many first-wave punk bands just
signed to major labels). So postpunk fulfilled the revolutionary promise of
punk by doing more radical music and also by the independent label explosion.
But then postpunk itself reached a kind of dead end, necessitating the shift
into what we in the U.K. called New Pop, basically trying to subvert the system
from within.

"You can see a similar dynamic actually with what I call
post-psychedelic music, which came out the Sixties full of idealism but
gradually lapsed into what they used to call "hippy capitalism".

"So basically I see music as evolving through this dialectic,
a new path is opened up which eventually, inevitably reaches an impasse, a cul
de sac, and so to avoid the quagmire of stagnation, the narrative then takes
another swerve, a new direction. Which itself then leads onto another dead end.

"This jerky, fitful progress is related to the intrinsic
contradictions of trying to deliver "revolution" through music which
is sold as commodities (records) and spectacles (live performances). So there
is a burst of energy that seems to open up utopian possibilities (sonic but
also new forms of musical practice, musical community). But because the impulse
is ultimately confined to the aesthetic, and because it always falls back into
some kind of commodification (a niche market of hip cultural goods), there is
always this moment of failure. And that keeps recurring because in the end all
these sonic revolutions are half-measures, or diversions of energy from actual
politics.

"Which is a bleak view, but I
think true: in Britain especially, we never had a revolution, we just have
endless "revolutions" in style and music (and in the discourse
surrounding them), we kind of had the fun, glamorous aspect of revolution
without any of the toil and sacrifice and danger of actual politics."